TIMBER SNOWS TIMBER TAKES
buy-out earlier this year will enable Snows Timber to really capitalise on the independent market place as Fiona Russell Horne found out.
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ntil March this year, Snows Timber, the timber processing and distribution operation, was part of the 250-year old merchant group Bradfords Group. Following an investment and transformation project – still ongoing - Snows is now fully independent under the ownership of a management buyout team, comprising managing director Ian Church, operations director Craig Willoughby and finance director Adam Cray.
“No divorce is ever easy but this one went as well as it could have done,” Church says, adding that it was always the Bradfords group wish that the Snows business was sold to its management. “Going forward, we are aiming to build a very strong and stable enterprise and capitalise on our new found independence in the marketplace that our buy-out has given us.”
The new business is minus the Glastonbury operation – sold to merchant group Sydenhams last year – and the operation in Dudley, both of which were disposed of as part of the transformation – Project Gallop, which also included the relocation of the head office and the consolidation of the sales teams into new premises in Towcester.
Project Gallop – the new head office overlooks the Towcester racecourse – began in January 2018 with preparations for the sale of the Dudley operation, which completed in June, shortly after the Towcester offices opened. “It was quite a fragmented business,” Church says. “It had four distribution centres around the country, each with its own internal sales team, all working independently of each other. However, we knew that if we were going to be a real national distributor, we needed a national sales function. So we closed
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TRANSFORMATION AT THE GALLOP A management
all four of those internal sales functions over a period of time and consolidated sales in Towcester. One of the things we did was to make a conscious decision to recruit people who came from a very customer service focused background, rather than those who knew and understood the timber market. Product knowledge can be taught, but the right attitude is what we were after.”
Core Business
The company’s main customers are merchants and the buying groups, with the independent timber merchants being core business. “We do service some of the national players in terms of top-up materials but, generally, it is independents that we are focussed on,” Church says.
Flexible logistics will play a big part in the company’s customer service offer going forward, Willoughby explains. “If a merchant has a big order then we can deliver direct to their customer’s site if that’s what they need us to do, We can loose pick smaller quantities of products to enable our customers to not have to receive the stock in store and pick it themselves in order to get it out to that one customer. All of that can slow up the supply chain.”
He adds that Snows’ ability to take an order, plan the right type of vehicle to fulfil it and filter that in without it causing any significant trouble is one of the key differentials between the company and its competitors. “We are
now seeing more and more dots on the map in terms of the places we are delivering to as our customers begin to take advantage of our services. There are no extended lead times for the customer, so they can maintain the service that they have promised to their customers.” Willoughby – whose background is in logistics with Sainsburys and Wincanton – sees this as a big growth driver for Snows, helping customers to cut out that step in the supply chain. “It helps our customers to keep their inventories leaner and makes good use of their cash flow and it’s good for their customers in that they can create a service offer for them,” he says.
In a similar vein, the company is increasingly forming partnerships with suppliers to offer additional ancillary products that Snows won’t necessarily take into stock, but which can be delivered by those suppliers direct to Snows customers. “This is a way of us working better with our suppliers, that allows us in turn to work better with our customers and offer something that is just that little bit different in the marketplace,” Willoughby says. Minimum order values are relatively low, meaning that Snows’ customers don’t have to order only full or half articulated loads and Church explains that a good number of customers are realising the benefit of operating in this way. “A number of the bigger customers are ordering their big trade packs and their fast moving products from us in bigger loads and ordering top-ups of slower
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net June 2019
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